Dutch travellers react calmly to loss of flight MH17 – “we are not America”
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
This wasn't an equipment failure or a natural disaster, so I don't really agree with this line of thinking.
"But we are not going to call for the government to go and catch the perpetrators or go to war."
If this was an intentional act, we do need to do something about it (so it doesn't happen again). Extreme pacifism just leads to bully nations like Russia taking over other nations with absolutely no intervention.
> This wasn't an equipment failure or a natural disaster, so I don't really agree with this line of thinking.
And its simply, factually incorrect; military forces shooting down civilian airliners is not something that never, never happens, nor is it something that is unlikely to happen again. In fact, it seems to have happened more than once each decade for most of the history of civilian aviation (though there may have been only once incident in the 1990s).
EDIT: The one instance I had seen in the 1990s actually involved two planes of the same airline shot down by missiles by the same rebels on subsequent days, and a third hit while loading by mortar fire while loading on the ground on the next day. So, the 1990s aren't an exception to the "more than once per decade".
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airliner_shootdown_inci...
And I'm glad that there are governments in place in this world that share this perspective.
Hitting back should not be the only strategy, but it should be available as a last resort. There are still evil people (and governments) still left in this world and sometimes the only way to stop them is by force.
Keep in mind that even if this happened once a year, flying would still be far, far safer than driving.
At most 3 is incorrect.
Not counting MH17, there are at least four civilian passenger aircraft that were definitively shot down by missiles, and more that were suspected to be (or were definitively shot down, but where I can't find definitive information on the "by missiles" part) in the last 30 years:
LN 602 (March 23, 2007): attributed to the Tamil Tigers using Manpad missiles
Siberia Airlines 1812 (October 4, 2001): admitted shot down by Ukrainian military
Two Transair Georgia flights (September 21-22, 1993): shot down by missiles fired by rebels
Iran Air 655 (July 3, 1988): shot down by the USS Vincennes
Air Malawi 7Q-YMB (November 6, 1987): shot down by Mozambique (can't find anything one way or the other about whether this was "by anti-aircraft missiles" rather than, say, guns, so maybe not technically within scope.)
There are far more than a dozen incidents in the past decades.
If 30,000 people a year died in plane crashes the planes would literally have to be falling out of the sky on fire every single day.
It's pretty much the worst PR possible for Russia. In fact, the only parties who have anything to gain from the plane going down are Kyiv and the US.
It was more than likely an unfortunate accident, as the separatists had shot down several fighter jets and military transports in the same area in the days leading up to MH17... On previous days MH17 had also flown south of Donetsk.
Sometimes military actions are taken for reasons other than PR.
> In fact, the only parties who have anything to gain from the plane going down are Kyiv and the US.
Making civilian air travel perceived as unsafe through the Ukraine (and thus, also, into or out of the Ukraine) increases economic pressure on the Ukrainian government to reach an accommodation with the rebels (the PR downside may overwhelm that advantage, but its not impossible to conceive that the rebels might see it as a net gain.) Its not that uncommon of a reason for rebel/separatist forces to attack civilian transport (air or otherwise), tourist, or other targets.
That's not to say I think that it was intentional -- I think that an accident is, given other incidents in the region, the most obvious explanation. OTOH, its not inconceivable that it could be intentional, and there is a clear potential motive for doing it intentionally.
It might be bad PR, but you would have to be one hell of a PR specialist to successfully spin this as an "unfortunate accident".
1. Russian government gives BUK to separatists. (what could go wrong?). We have deleted tweets from the separatists bragging about their newly acquired BUK and youtube videos of the BUK being driven around.
2. Separatists think they are shooting down a Ukrainian transport plane. They brag about shooting down a plane at the time the plane went down. They alert journalists who go to the site and are surprised to find bodies and passports. The videos are on youtube.
So if the Dutch or Dutch government are not mad at the Russians, then dunno what it would take.
youtube-dl http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5E8kDo2n6g -o 1.mp4 && mediainfo 1.mp4 | grep date
Encoded date: UTC 2014-07-16 19:07:49 Tagged date: UTC 2014-07-16 19:07:49
One day before ... Frame-up?
The guy mentioned in the article isn't representative for all of the Netherlands. I heard many Dutch people speak of war.
The Dutch government is generally veryyyy reserved and politically correct. They don't often act fast or decisively and are certainly not going to use a lot of violence.
It really proves their point.
Better example, someone at a concert gets hit with a bottle someone else threw. It was the only bottle thrown at that concert or any other concert they've ever been to. They've know that it does happen though very rarely. They look at you and say "I'm not going to do anything major, the chances of that happening again are slim." You suspect they won't return to that same venue however. Would you be impressed or would you think they're a little crazy?
Personally, I'd be impressed.